About NEAT

To find out more about our work, choose a Program above. This is the website for NEAT and the NEAT Education Fund (NEATEF) - learn more about the two components of NEAT here.

Vision & Mission

The National Equality Action Team (NEAT) harnesses the unique power of LGBTQ+ people, their allies and community partners to educate and take collective action across issues in the fight for Justice.

We're Doing Something Different

NEAT builds on 20 years of grassroots work to empower lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+) people and their allies to take collective action across issues for Justice. We partner with issue leaders to educate the community beyond matters that only affect LGBTQ+ people (like non-discrimination), to include issues that also affect them (like reproductive rights), often disproportionately. We create and support opportunities to take action on these issues so that through NEAT, people and organizations everywhere are working together to call from home, knock on doors, receive training, and share experiences without traditional resource or geography limitations. At NEAT, we empower everyday LGBTQ+ people, their allies and community partners to make extraordinary change for Justice. And with your help, we're just getting started.

A Unique RoleLGBTQ+ people have always known injustice, but not because of the sexual orientation or gender. They are also women, people of color, workers, immigrants, living with HIV/AIDS, religious minorities and more. LGBTQ+ people stand at a unique intersection of multiple identities giving them, their allies and community partners a unique perspective and responsibility.

Big “J” JusticeThis unique role means an attack on any of these identities is an attack on all LGBTQ+ people. Therefore NEAT’s fight cannot be limited to issues that only affect LGBTQ+ people, but must include issues that also affect them - often disproportionately. We call this Big “J” Justice, because we know ours is “one struggle, one fight.”

Servant Leadership, Collective ActionNEAT leads by always partnering in support of local or issue-expert organizations, to activate existing but often under-utilized volunteer and grassroots networks to take bold and effective collective action for Justice.

Empower Everywhere; Duplicate NowhereBy building our programs around remote access, NEAT can activate hard to reach suburban and rural volunteers and leverage the overwhelming number in urban centers to support campaigns in communities where resources are often most needed. We are laser-focused on where the gaps in our movement are and put our energy there. Instead of duplicating the efforts of others, we build strong partnerships with them and leverage those strengths.

The Halo EffectNEAT leaves every campaign better than we find it so your donations and support always go farther. For example, by training and regularly engaging our partners’ volunteers to phone bank, that partner now has a cadre of trained workers on standby for use on their own progressive campaigns whether NEAT is involved or not.

Built a grassroots network of 1,000 organizers to support 5 national and global initiatives resulting in 1500+ actions in response to major LGBTQ events including the Pulse Orlando shooting, and 2 major rallies at the U.S. Supreme Court.